Tuesday, May 26, 2015

In Greater
Western Sydney’s three-and-a-bit-year stint in the AFL I have several times
referred to them as terrible, or some variant thereof. For the first time ever this
week, GWS has a positive rating on these rankings. I am now prepared to say
that the Giants are good. They may actually be more than good, given the rate
at which they are improving. The Giants have won six of their first eight
matches for the season, including beating highly-ranked teams like Hawthorn and
Adelaide.Meanwhile,
the newer club that was expected to be good, the Gold Coast Suns, now sit back
on the bottom of the rankings. They may be off the bottom within a week, given
there is a group of teams that are basically as bad, including Carlton, St.
Kilda, Brisbane, and possibly Melbourne. The flipside to this group of bad
teams is that there are twelve teams with positive ratings, from Hawthorn all
the way down to Essendon and Collingwood.The other point I thought was of note is that
the top four rated teams are now clearly the top four: Hawthorn, West Coast,
Sydney, and Fremantle. While many football followers probably have some doubts
about the credentials of the Eagles, the other teams in that group will come as
barely any surprise, and there looks at this stage a good chance the premier
will come from one of those teams.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

News this week broke that Bill Simmons has
left the sports entertainment network ESPN, where he had worked for 15
years. As I’ve highlighted on this blog before I
am a big fan of Simmons’ writing, particularly his writing on the National
Basketball Association. Here are links to what I think was some of his best
stuff:Simmons’ annual ‘NBA Trade Value’ columns were always fun. The idea
behind them was that Simmons ranked the NBA players in terms of their ‘trade
values’, in that any given player would theoretically be traded by their team if
that team could get back a player that was higher on the list. Grantland
recently collected the whole
lot, dating back to 2001.Also fun was Simmons’ annual NBA Draft Diaries.
Basically Simmons kept a running diary of his thoughts and predictions while he
was watching the NBA Draft Coverage. (I used a similar format on my blog
post on reading the final Harry Potter book.)Simmons also often used the ‘retro-diary’ format, such as for his
re-watching of the 1987 NBA
All-Star Game. Even within the column itself Simmons admitted this was
possibly taking sports-obsessiveness to new levels. However, his preview of the
eventually good but hardly famous 2011 NBA
All-Star Game probably went even further in its obsessiveness of NBA
greats.Simmons had a bunch of amusing ideas that he
liked to repeat throughout his columns. One was the Ewing Theory,
which was the theory that sometimes team play better without their supposedly
best player. Another was the Entertaining-As-Hell
Tournament, which was an idea for determining the last couple of spots in
the NBA playoffs. Another was the Pyramid
format for sports Halls of Fame, which was an idea he took to epic, rambling,
but entertaining, levels in his ‘Book of Basketball’.
I also liked his questions
for determining the NBA MVP, but hated his idea that if no-one ‘deserved’
the award it should
be rolled over into the next season.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Back in 2012
Hawthorn started the season at 4-4, and sat outside the top eight, and yet
these rankings had the Hawks ranked at #1. This reflected that the Hawks,
when they were winning, were winning big, whereas their losses at that stage had
been narrow, and to good (or at least decent) teams. As we know, the wins soon
started coming, and the Hawks were the minor premier that year, and probably should
have been the premier.Similarly
Hawthorn started this season 3-3, but these rankings had it clearly still on
top. The Hawks’ three losses this year, while possibly setting back a little
their chances of finishing in the top two, are considered here as nothing to be
too alarmed about. None of those losses have been big, while Hawthorn is still
winning big, as exemplified by its 105-point win against Melbourne on the
weekend. The second ranked team here, West Coast, is also following this
pattern in its results.But before I get all ‘I told you so’, I should
point out that, since
they hit rock bottom on the rankings here a couple of weeks ago, the Brisbane
Lions have actually been playing OK. ‘The way things are going I can’t see
Brisbane giving the bottom spot back for more than a week or two,’ I said…
Well, clearly things haven’t been going as they were. The bottom five teams are
so close that one bad loss could still see the Lions ranked last here again, but
there are a few other teams now that look more likely, or at least as likely,
of being worse this season.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

The Western
Bulldogs and Collingwood, though much improved this season, are not rated here
as among the top teams, and this weekend’s results added support to that. The
Pies lost comfortably to a middle-of-the-road team in Geelong, while the Dogs
lost to the lowly-ranked St. Kilda. For Collingwood, even though I
suggested last week that these rankings may be underrating the Magpies a little
due to their injuries last season, easy matches against Brisbane, St.
Kilda, and Carlton had boosted their ladder position. The Dogs have had the
more impressive wins, against the Eagles, Crows, and Swans, but their good form
this season does not yet outweigh their bad form in 2014.Talking of teams that may be slightly underrated
by these rankings, Fremantle may fall into that category if one thinks that
establishing a match-winning lead should be rated more highly. In these
rankings only the final margin matters. There have been a few games this
season, including in the Dockers’ win against the Bombers on the weekend, where
their lead has been much bigger than the eventual final margin. Based on the
final winning margin, Fremantle’s performance against Essendon was only roughly
about par. Because of these second half fadeouts the Dockers are rated here as
no more than one of the best five teams, despite being a couple of games clear
on top of the ladder. Still even if they are relatively close to their rivals
in terms of ability, a top two finish for Fremantle would give them a pretty
good chance of making the Grand Final again, based on the home ground advantage
they would gain for the finals series.

Saturday, May 9, 2015

5.I Don’t Wanna Fight –
Alabama ShakesThis is now
going to be the song I think of when I think of Alabama Shakes. Or Alabama BBQ
sauce. Or malted milkshakes.4.Let It Happen – Tame ImpalaI meant to
include this one last month, but forgot. It opens with an ‘ooh-mow-mow-ma-ma’
sound that I couldn’t quite place at first, but finally pegged it as (most
likely coincidentally) the opening lyric from one of the tracks from Spoon’s
latest album (‘Outlier’).
Following ‘Elephant’ and ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ purveyors of psychedelic
music clips must be queuing up to make the video for this epic seven-minute
track.

3.Minimal Affection – The
VaccinesThe Vaccines are one of those bands who came
roaring out of the blocks with an opening track – ‘Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)’ –
that they haven’t matched since. On ‘Minimal Affection’ though they seem to
perfect the laid-back, deadpan, early ‘80s-like style that Julian Casablancas
and the Strokes have been striving for over the past decade. It somehow,
unexpectedly, seems to come a lot more naturally to the Vaccines. I am not sure
that they could do it again, but if they could then, as much as I still long
for the band that was seemingly going to pump out hit after hit like ‘Ra Ra Ra’,
I’ll pay a bit more notice.2.Thought I Was A Spaceman –
BlurWhile being more than merely a repeat of past
glories Blur’s first album in a decade, ‘The Magic Whip’, does evoke several of
the different periods of their career. Opener ‘Lonesome Street’ recalls the
Britpop of ‘Parklife’, ‘Go Out’ and its heavy, scratchy guitar sound feels like
it is from their self-titled album, while ‘There Are Too Many Of Us’ and its
violins would fit in pretty well with Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz work. ‘Thought I
Was A Spaceman’ is a bit like Gorillaz too, crossed with some of the spaced-out
tracks from Blur’s most ponderous album ‘13’. Some of Blur’s best tracks for me
are when Albarn’s voice is at its most emotive and beautiful (stuff like ‘Ambulance’
and ‘The Universal’), and this is one of those tracks for me, making it
possibly my favourite from the new album.

1.Vertigo – Mini MansionsI didn’t know who Mini Mansions were until about
a month or two ago; they are a Queens of the Stone Age-associated ‘side
project’, though only to the extent that QOTSA’s bassist is in the group. Their
latest and second album, ‘The Great Pretenders’ is an enjoyable romp through
‘60s and ‘70s classic rock/pop styles – T-Rex, the Kinks, the Beatles, the
Beach Boys, and probably bunches of other bands from that era. ‘Vertigo’ is the
‘one with Alex Turner’, with the Arctic Monkeys frontman contributing a verse
to this track. These sort of things can feel tokenistic (see 70 per cent of
hip-hop tracks with ‘special guests’), but Turner actually adds something here
with his trademark complicated wordplay. He still sounds too clever for his own
good, but it works here, and the chorus is lovely. (Tip for heterosexual men:
watch the videoclip, online, because you won’t see it on TV that often.)

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

This was
one, in theory, for the long-time Avengers fans. The first Avengers movie had
the star characters, the characters who were already known to the general
public through their films if nothing else. The second Avengers movie, ‘Age of
Ultron’, puts a higher emphasis on characters that are more closely tied to the
comic book – Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, the Vision – characters
that have long been members of the Avengers, and that without that membership,
would probably have been mostly forgotten decades ago. When our nine Avengers
face off against Ultron’s robotic army near the movie’s end we basically have
the characters that, minus a couple of members, have been the core of the
Avengers throughout their fifty year history. For many millions of people it is
a cool action sequence; for several hundred thousand hardcore fans who have
grown up reading the characters the moment may strike them as slightly surreal.I liked this
movie probably about as much as I did the first instalment. One good point
about the Marvel sequels is that, with the introductions out of the way, they
can hit the ground running. In part because of that I generally find them more
engaging than the originals: ‘X2’, ‘Spider-Man 2’, ‘Captain America: The Winter
Soldier’, and ‘Thor: The Dark World’ among them. In contrast to the first movie
the Avengers are no longer feeling each other out, but fighting (and partying)
as a group.Of course it
wouldn’t be a Marvel production without conflicts between our heroes. In this
case the main source of conflict is Tony Stark/Iron Man deciding to create an
artificial intelligence to save the world, and deliberately choosing not to consult
with his teammates in the process. As most people will already know that
artificial intelligence – the robot Ultron – almost immediately rebels and
causes massive havoc. I have never been a big fan of Ultron, who has moved
between being a cheesy robot hiding out in a
convent and full-scale genocidal maniac. This movie didn’t necessarily make me a fan, but
James Spader and his menacing voice played Ultron about as well as I reckon he
could be played.Other
elements I also had mixed feelings about, though generally on the positive side
of the ledger. The Hulk/Black Widow romance was a strange addition given that
it is completely foreign to the comics, and was a little bit awkward at times,
but Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johannson seem to make it work. The lesser-known
Avengers I mentioned above also have their backstories tweaked, but apart from
perhaps Hawkeye the family man, none of them are major reinventions of those
characters. The ‘Tony Stark as creator of Ultron’ bit has also drawn mixed
reactions from fans (in the comics it was Henry Pym); still the idea that a
hero unintentionally created a dangerous menace remains, and Robert Downey Jr.
remains a pretty good figure to build your franchise around.Like most of
the good Marvel movies the story does not necessarily scale the same heights as
the very best of the comic book stories but it nestles pretty well among the
better ones. Apart from the final battle highlights are the aforementioned
party scene, a destructive battle between Iron Man and a mind-controlled Hulk,
the reaction of the Scarlet Witch to Ultron’s devastating blow, and the
integration of other characters from throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Not everything hits the mark, and some quips are stretched or fall a bit flat.
But a lot of work has gone into getting this massive production running
smoothly, and for the most part it works. Hopefully it all still works when the
final chapter is spread over two whole films a few years down the track.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

There was
some action at the top, middle, and bottom of the rankings this week.At the top
last year’s premier Hawthorn are now clearly the number one team, with about two goals break on the Swans. Meanwhile Sydney’s loss to the Bulldogs has
put it closer to the teams ranked third to fifth: Port Adelaide, Fremantle, and
West Coast. Perhaps Sydney’s
win against Port a few weeks back was its last gasp for 2015 as a clear top two
side?In the
middle, Collingwood rises up a few spots, with the Magpies having won four of
their first five games for 2015. There is an argument that these rankings have
been underrating the Magpies this year. While Collingwood was horrid towards
the end of 2014, that may have been due in part to its significant amount of
injuries, which these rankings do not account for.At the bottom Brisbane replaces St. Kilda as the
lowest-ranked team. Arguably it became clear a couple of weeks ago that the
Lions are now the worst team in the AFL. While the Saints have still been bad
they have put in a couple of decent performances. Most of Brisbane’s
performances this year have been dreadful. The way things are going I can’t see
Brisbane giving the bottom spot back for more than a week or two before the
season is finished.